Saturday, April 13, 2013

While Randy wrestled with grids all day, this is what I contended with down in St. Louis at the Museum of Transportation. Note, the pole isn't supposed to be like that, nor is the catcher supposed to be on the ground.

6 comments:

Thanks. I deleted your comment to keep your e-mail address from the spammers.

No lives lost, just a minor annoyance. At lest we have a small enough operation, it was easy to just turn the power off, get on top of the car and turn the pole around and install a new rope. Also, the shop is close.

I have seen much worse. You could have bent the pole or broken a pulloff. I couldn't tell if the car has a trolley wheel or a shoe from the photo. If it has a shoe, I would suggest changing to a wheel. Wheels work better when backpoling.

The last time I operated the 4391, many years ago, I managed to bend the pole up pretty good on a backup move. It took about half a day with the help of Ed Woytula to fix it. So I decided not to run any single-ended cars if I can avoid it. Let better men than myself handle these problems!

One of the real secrets to making a backup move with a pole is to have the wire properly hung and tensioned. Hard to do that effectively for all the wire we have in the air, and that usually means the webbing of overhead going into Barns is the last to get attention.

Yes, wheels help, but using them in a mix with carbon insert sliders introduces other issues. Some interurbans used a backup shoe design that had a toggle action to cause it flip over when backing to minimize 'incidents'.

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The "Hicks Locomotive and Car Works" banner at the top is taken from original artwork of the company, which was in business from 1897 to 1911. The picture behind it shows the four restored CA&E wood cars at the Museum, starting with #309, which was built by the Hicks Locomotive and Car Works in 1907.

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